Really enjoying the different âflavoursâwith my Focal Clears, and my Monarch iems.
Iâve just hooked a phone running arc via usb into a DAC and straight into my power amp. Just wanted to listen to what arc at 768 pcm would sounds like. Pretty good tbh. No HQPlayer or room correction but still impressive for how simple.
Ma non ho capito le cuffie, le devi attaccare al tablet o al telefonino poi li puoi sentire nellâuscita cuffie dellâamplificatore???
ââââ-
Translation
But I didnât understand the headphones, do you have to attach them to your tablet or mobile phone then you can hear them in the headphone output of the amplifier???
Both. When you plug your headphones in your phone you stay mobile. Plugged in into an amp fixates you to your seat.
To give an example. I have an AKG-headphone. It is wired. With a dongle (a audioquest dragonfly cobalt) Incan connect them to my iPad and watch a movie in private or listen to music through Roon. I can select an opra-profile when listening to music to give the headphone an eq thatâs better than Iâve found myself.
When I want to listen to music in the living room and the rest of the family wants something else, I have a bleu chair. The color isnât important for the sound quality. Next to it there is a bleusound node nano and a spl headphone amplifier. I can connect my AKG to it and listen to music there. I can load the same opra-profile into the nano and enjoy music there.
I miss Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 among the in-ear headphones available. Very happy with mine. Could they be added soon?
Thank you for clarification! I made again a short look into those OPRA profiles, now just with the Huawei Buds. I understand now, that neither Roon nor OPRA does headroom adjustment, itâs just coming from the chosen profile which the creator of it did define. And as I think to understand now, everybody/anybody can create a profile just as he likes, no matter if it is measured correctly or measured at all, just with his personal taste, right? Then I understand, that neither the defined headroom adjustments nor even the whole EQ adjustments are any reliable at all. This explains, why the EQ adjustments are so different for the same headphones, showing that they never can come from a reliable measurement, as be seen on the 4 available profiles for those Huawei Buds below. I have tried it a little, as just for personal taste, any other profile for completely different models and brands does work well with those Buds too, just depending on music style or mastering. 
What makes you think and state this? The adjustments are personal adjustments based on preferences as to what the final output âshouldâ be, from the perspective of the person creating the curve adjustments. The original measurements can be very accurate. How the person measures and how they hear can be very, very different. Thus the range of changes that are being displayed in the chart graphs you reference.
The whole point is to listen, and then adjust as necessary based on your own ears. Sure, many, many people will find a curve adjustment that sounds okay, fine, good, very good or even exceptional. For those that donât, keep making the necessary changes until you get where you want to be.
What makes me think and state this, is actually the content of my posting, And what I read, you confirm my findings in your reply.
Just one example to clarify it even more what I did want to say: I have an Umik-1 measurement microphone for room correction. Every single piece of them has an correction file which can be download for its serial number. That correction file is not a matter of taste, but of measurement,
If just for the taste, I can ask my wife, daughter, son or neighbor to make a profile for my headphones and then chose one of themâșïž
Unreliable how?
2 of the measurements are AutoEQ profiles from different people, what are they being measured to?
Another is one personâs measurement to (one of) the Harman curve(s) and the other seems to be the same personâs measurement to personal taste.
Did you want all the profiles to have the same curve?
99 flavours of vanilla?
It seems you did not read my reply to another post like yours, so I allow me to refer to that.
Well you canât expect someone to measure every headphone out there . Most of these settings are made by measuring multiple headphone multiple times. The average frequency response of those measurements gets corrected with PEQ or convolution filters.
But if the manufacturer changes something during production over time you might need new measurements and a different EQ profile .
If you want âperfect â you would have to send your headphones to someone to measure them or do it yourself
I agree @Joe_underscore - I use Resolveâs EQ from Headphone dot com and I have just posted in there about how I wonder why his EQ is so very different (and far simpler) than for example OPRAâs Oratory1990 EQ with the same headphone (HiFiMan Edition XS).
Surely the purpose of measuring a headphone with the very expensive equipment and head assembly required is to arrive at a clear graph of the unadjusted response. That response is then examined by whatever software they are using (such as we would use REW for example for speaker and room correction) in alignment with a house curve (they all seem to use Harmon) to arrive at a set of adjustments that should bring the headphones into alignment with that ideal.
Why would there be personal involvement to taste? This is not a question of taste, as you say for that you might as well give it to someone else to tweak the PEQ settings to their will!!
If those who create such EQ profiles then adjust them to their own personal preference the whole concept goes out of the window. The idea surely is to correct the headphone in the areas in which it fails to meet the standardised listening curve for a flat response? If we donât like it, then we can adjust the PEQ to taste⊠but to my mind that completely defeats the purpose!
As an exampleâŠ
Difference between Resolve and Oratory1990 EQ
Here we can see clearly the extra detail that is very obvious when listening to the Resolve EQ is down to the fact he doesnât pull down the 3khz at all or boost the 2khz by anywhere near as much! For classical music I much prefer the Resolve EQ, I can hear the massed violin strings clearly separated and defined⊠detail I suppose you would call it.
Resolve
Oratory1990
Both of these measurements and subsequent adjustments are to correct shortcomings in the headphone frequency response to arrive at the theoretical ideal - so either the two pieces of software used have different ideals, or there is tweaking to taste afterwards. Resolve posts a measurement graph taken after the adjustment to corroborate the effect is as expected, and actually it would be nice to see this for other EQâs in the OPRA display pane.
I just think that if we might end up with dozens of personal headphone EQâs in an OPRA open to all that would be counterproductive.
Look at the screenshots shared above, one of them in âoratory1990 targetâ not Harman target. One of them is âHarman targetâ but it doesnât say which one.
Youâd need to go to AutoEQ or Oratory1990âs Reddit to look at the descriptions of his measurements, he provides detailed descriptions of them.
I think thereâs a fundamental misunderstanding of what OPRA is. Itâs a place for people to measure headphones and upload for others to share, youâre not going to get 100 people measuring the same headphone and 100 people producing the same curve.
OPRA just gives headphone users a measure of convenience, to try PEQ curves for headphones easily. If you donât like a measurement, try another, if you donât like any, do it yourself the long way by adding it manually like we did pre OPRA.
None of this is important, itâs just a curve preset, provided by someone for free, you either like it or you donât.
I suggest you join oratory1990âs Reddit to understand this better.
Edit:
What exactly is âtheoretically idealâ?
EXACTLY!!! Too many people are trying to make and absolute out of something that is relative, to the persons involved (including measuring, tweaking and listening).
If one of the ear cups is positioned a fraction of a mm (inch⊠whatever) in a different location on the test rig, the recorded sound signal will be different. Thatâs just one reason that most of the curves are based on an average. But, then that by itself is adding to the âNON-absoluteâ aspect to all of this.
Some people enjoy speakers that have paper dome tweetersâŠsome prefer aluminumâŠsome berilliumâŠsome unobtanium!!!
I donât think thatâs correct. Oratoryâs OE target is Harman. See the relevant entry
https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/wiki/index/list_of_presets/?rdt=43479
The fact there is no gain compensation is a problem. Iâm having to use Parametric EQ gain compensation as a work around, but I would rather not add anoter layer of DSP.
It has transformed my 30 year old HD560 Ovation IIâs. (thanks innerfidelity)
So keep on innovating Roon !
This screenshot shows an âOratory1990â target:
This shows a Harman target, it doesnât specify which one:
This is a screenshot from the Reddit link you posted:
The gain is supposed to be baked into the preset in OPRA unlike adding it manually.
If youâre finding otherwise Iâd raise a support ticket.
Iâm seeing no issues with my headphones.
I donât want a âmeasure of convenienceâ I want a measure of adjustment to the headphones concerned to correct the unwanted dips or humps inherent in the design, subjective EQ is not what I want, as you say I can do that myself.
Now I hear what you say concerning target curves, and I do wonder why the Harmon curve has such a hump at 2k - this is not the case for B+K in my listening room measurements. So maybe alongside tried and trusted OPRA EQâs like Oratory1990 should be displayed the target curve used (the display is the expected effect of the applied adjustment, not the target). And thanks for the info, I never realised he had his own tailored curve. I think on the Headphones.com website Resolve says he is using âHarmon Combinedâ.
And âwhat exactly is a theoretical idealâ is the closest match to a flat frequency response, taking into account the human ear/brain interface for sensitivity to certain frequencies using a target curve. Usually this adds an uplift to the bass and a gentle curve down to the high treble⊠I am presuming the Harmon curve 2k uplift is because headphones attached to your ears behave differently to in room speakers?
Resolve shows the before and after effects, measured again with the same equipment used for the original test. As can be seen from the graphs he presents the phones do match a lot more closely the curve after adjustment. I suppose if that curve isnât a recognised standard and is tweaked for the testers subjective taste, we should look elsewhere. Then, when we have a headphone that does not emphasise any particular frequency, then we can tweak to our hearts content.
If you look at the accompanying pdf with oratory1990s measurements on Reddit, youâll often see in his notes, he recommends which bands to adjust for certain circumstances.
All for subjective improvements or changes.
I suppose it depends on which curve, I think there are 3 Harman curves, I understand the 2018 curve is commonly used but Iâm not sure if itâs used exclusively. EQing to different curves will give different results.
I subbed to Roon again as I was intrigued by OPRA, I think itâs a great initiative. I already had an oratory1990 PEQ I used extensively, manually entered into my streamer. I disabled that and used OPRA, just using the first oratory1990 preset in the list for my headphone.
The result sounded to me, identical to using the manual PEQ when streaming from LMS. So to me, a success.
Iâm more interested in how music sounds to me, not how it should be to a curve, I sometimes follow the recommendations I referenced above and increase or decrease bands to tweak the sound on certain recordings. I use the free available presets as a starting point, 99% of the time I leave them as is.
I think the work oratory1990 and others have done is fantastic and Iâm grateful to them and I think Roon have done well here.
Luckily OPRA is not a feature anyone needs to use, like me and SPLâs or live radio, others find uses for them, I donât, maybe OPRA is not for everyone, some folks should locate measurements they know are measured to the exact curve they desire, then add them manually.
Whether they like the sound, only they will know.
